Alice in the Cities (1974) - 7/10. For the record, the cities are New York, Amsterdam, and Wuppertal (which has an amazing suspension train where the carriage hangs below the elevated track). A man travels with a 9-year-old girl who is not his relation and for two hours there is not a single suggestion of anything inappropriate going on. It was a more innocent time, I guess (or maybe Wenders is a genius. Or both). This would make a good double bill with Paper Moon. For years the film was shown in 1.33:1, but Wenders contends he and Robby Muller always wanted 1.66:1 and that's the way it's presented on the new Criterion disc. Given that the movie was shot on 16mm, the 1080p image is probably identical (apart from the framing issue) to what audiences saw back in the day.

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That's what you get, Drink, for being such an annoying Melville fanboy.

Loulou (1980) - 7/10. Maurice Pialat does tranche de vie with Gerard Depardieu, Isabelle Huppert, and Guy Marchand (although Huppert, in an interview on the Blu-ray disc, claims that's not what he was doing at all). In any event, quotidian reality is rigorously edited--Pialat's great strength is his editing. The colors look authentic: several of the recent Pialat restorations have been orange-and-tealed, but that's not the case here. Man, Huppert used to be really cute! Man, Depardieu used to be smaller than a Zeppelin!

Logged

That's what you get, Drink, for being such an annoying Melville fanboy.

The Quare Fellow - 7/10 - Grim British prison drama with Patrick McGoohan as a warder whose first job is to oversee a hanging. Sylvia Sims is the condemned man's wife. I understand Brendan Behan's original play is much more comic; this is dark, grim kitchen sink stuff with only a few dashes of dark humor.

Welcome to L.A. (1976) - 4/10. Welcome to shit. Against the background of the music biz, couples uncouple then recouple with other partners and then uncouple again and none of it has an ounce of credibility. Throughout the film there's a dude laying down some sessions for an album and it is some of the worst songwriting/performing I've ever seen in this kind of movie. It becomes unintentionally funny after a while, but finally boring. Alan Rudolph did make a good film once, though. It was called Equinox but it doesn't seem to be available on DVD or Blu, so I had to settle for this turkey.

Logged

That's what you get, Drink, for being such an annoying Melville fanboy.

Body of Lies 6/10Starts like a very good spy film and then the whole thing gets spoiled by a crappy romance suplot that weirldy becomes the main plot, probably to hide the emptiness. It's a shame, it was promising. Leone would be pissed off.Oscar Isaac has a nice part in it. This guy was everywhere before he was famous: Sucker Punch, Agora, Bourne, Drive, Che...

Horace & Pete S01E09 10/10Just one episode left. This show is like Paris Texas' booth scene for 7 hours or so.

yup. especially episode 3, but the whole series has that vibe (which is great, because thats one of the best movie scenes in history)

episode 9 left me feeling more empty and devastated than any show or movie maybe ever hasThe White Diamond - 7.5/10Decent Herzog docu though if at times pretty boring. Some very, very good scenes and moments though

Faust (1960) - 7.5/10 - Recording of Gustaf Grundgens' legendary performance as Mephistopheles. Not cinematically interesting, but a worthwhile curio: Grundgens was the German Olivier, if Olivier were a Nazi collaborator, and this is his most famous role. Very happy to have found this: YouTube works wonders!